‘All?’ said Fry. ‘There’s a great deal more to it than that, isn’t there, sir?’
‘I don’t know. I just did what I was asked. No more than that.’
Fry glanced at Cooper. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Lloyd while she’d been talking to him. If he’d been following her line of thought, he should be ready with the next question, the one that would unsettle Lloyd that little bit more.
‘This friend that you told the lie for, sir,’ said Cooper. ‘That would have been Melvyn Hudson, I expect?’
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Lloyd’s eyes flicked nervously to Cooper, and back to Fry again. He wasn’t sure now which of them to worry about most.
‘If you’re thinking of lying again, sir,’ said Fry, ‘I would strongly advise against it.’
He looked down at the water of the pond for a few moments, then at the house. Whatever he was thinking, it was making him uncomfortable. Then a calculating look came into Lloyd’s eyes. He turned his head away towards the water, trying to avoid Cooper seeing his face. But Fry was on the other side of him, and she saw it.
‘Actually, it wasn’t Melvyn, it was Richard Slack,’ he said.
‘Really?’
‘He wanted me to sign some paperwork. He said there had been a bit of an administrative mix-up at the firm, and he thought I’d be willing to help him out.’
‘And did you?’
Lloyd shook his head. ‘Normally, I would have helped him out. Richard was a friend, and we should be able to feel we can call on each other. But this would have been highly irregular. The rules are very strict on the documentation. He put me in an embarrassing situation, and I had no option but to refuse. I could have lost my job.’
‘What exactly did he want you to do?’
‘He wanted me to sign off a job without the disposal certificate.’ ‘Is that the certificate that’s issued by the registrar?’
‘Yes. We can’t do a disposal without the formal authorization. It’s the funeral director’s job to make sure it’s presented. Richard said it had been lost. He tried to blame Melvyn, actually, but I’m not sure I believed that.’
‘And you refused?’
‘Certainly.’
‘So the cremation couldn’t go ahead?’ asked Fry.
‘Obviously.’
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‘What happened to the funeral, then?’
‘There wasn’t one. Well, not as far as I was concerned. I don’t know how it was resolved, and I didn’t ask. In any case, I understood there wasn’t to be a funeral service in our chapel, just the cremation.’
‘I don’t understand. No funeral service?’
‘It isn’t all that unusual. Sometimes the family don’t want to come to the crematorium. They have the service elsewhere, then the funeral director conveys the coffin for cremation.’
‘In that case, there would be no one to witness the arrival of the coffin?’
‘Just the driver of the hearse, and perhaps a colleague to help deliver the coffin. It comes straight into the cremation suite, in that case. But we still need the paperwork, obviously.’
‘Yes.’
‘Now and then we have a job where there’s no service of any kind. No family, no mourners. Those are the homeless people, the sad cases where someone has died and their identity can’t be established, or where no relatives can be traced. The local authority meets the cost of those disposals. Everyone is entitled to proper disposal.’
Fry looked at Cooper. It was his turn.
‘Mr Lloyd, do you remember the name of the person Richard Slack wanted you to sign the documentation for?’
‘No, he never told me that. And I didn’t ask.’
‘There was a lot you didn’t ask.’
‘Sometimes that’s the best way.’
‘Shouldn’t you have reported this incident to someone,, if you were being completely scrupulous?’
Lloyd sighed. ‘It was very difficult. But Richard was a friend, as I said. I suppose I thought that if I didn’t cooperate with his scheme, he would have to do the right thing and take the blame. I know it’s a problem for a funeral director to get a bad reputation, but he must have bitten the bullet and owned up.’
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‘When was this exactly?’ asked Cooper.
‘Well, I’m not sure, but it can’t have been many weeks before Richard died.’
Fry closed her notebook. ‘Thank you, sir. You’ve been quite helpful.’
Before they left, she looked into the pond for a last glimpse of the pale fish, but it was being too elusive.
‘I wish I could afford to breed these sturgeon,’ said Lloyd. ‘Somebody told me their eggs are where Iranian Imperial Caviar comes from. That’s the caviar with a golden colour, not black like the Russian stuff.’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
Lloyd leaned over the water and stretched out a hand. Fry thought at first that he was reaching to scoop out
